Since the 2016 election, there’s been a sprawling debate within the left over whether Democrats should abandon “identity politics” and focus instead on a forward-leaning message centered on economic populism. (Social identity is a central influence on everyone’s political choices, so when we talk about “identity politics” in this context, we really mean identity politics […]

Today, in the wake of the Great Recession, with crisis now the norm, one wonders if the U.S. economy ever really recovered from the 1970s industrial crisis to begin with. Perhaps, instead of progressing, our economy has somehow regressed—returning to old patterns of the distant past. We live, writes the labor historian Jefferson Cowie in The […]

The story of the growing inequality in the United States has many dimensions. There is the overarching story of the last four decades of polarizing income, wealth, and opportunity. But the many ways these inequalities manifest depend on people’s gender, race, age, immigration status, and other experience. One piece of the story is to understand […]

My husband and I have been pretty good at saving money over the years, which means that we have enough of a cushion to start passing along some of it to our children and grandchildren while we’re alive, rather than leaving it behind as their inheritance. If we live another 20 years, give or take, […]